Hi Mike,
I really, really like this poem! Maybe it's the way the first 3 lines end in
full stops and I feel their power (I seem to feel the silence at the end of
each line of a landscape that's under heavy snow...). Then the poem lets me
move slowly through each image that follows. It's easy to read and
skillfully done.
And you write "If anyone's wondering what it's like in Finland just now..."
Well, I've a friend who's gone back home for the holiday. I'll see her again
in a fortnight! So I've been wondering!!! I find a sense of place.
I've also just been wondering about your last stanza. It gives a feel of
using other peoples well worn adjectives (endless, unforgiven) and the tone
seems to slip into thinking "I'm a poem" which is a shame because all that
had gone before it was so fresh and far more unselfconsciously a poem.
I guess it may be because you're not just doing the reflecting, but
directing it as well, in the concluding stanza (whereas in the previous
stanzas I was doing that through the descriptions I was being given!). Know
what I mean?
And any chance of a title that really fits the specifics of the poem?
(Oh, and just a question...) And is the phrase you repeat "the dead end of
the year," is that a translation of something Finnish - like "back end" is
used for autumn in parts of the UK?
Bob
PS I've also suggested a specific change - challenged a word - (in brackets)
below!
>From: Mike Horwood <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: New sub: Life and Death in the North
>Date: Wed, 8 Jan 2003 10:44:15 +0200
>
>If any of you have been wondering what itīs like in Finland just now, itīs
>quite a lot like this:
>
>
>
>Life and Death in the North
>
>This is the dead end of the year.
>Nothing lives under this lowering sky.
>The frozen air weighs like stone.
>Booted and scarved and wool-wrapped to the ears
>I step out on the empty land
>where a line of distant pines divides
>converging planes of white and grey.
>
>This is the dead end of the world.
>No life is "possible" here. (I think you mean "visible" because, you
>continue:)
>Everything warm has left, "or lies
>hidden and sleeping." (ie it's there but invisible!)
>A graveyard of summerīs rushes
>stand in frozen stasis at the ice-lakeīs rim
>looking on the cold Medusa face,
>impervious to the windīs persuasion.
>
>Shadows over the untouched white
>resolve to footprints of fingerīs-end size
>where no feet can have run.
>Is this the ice-light playing tricks?
>Stepping closer I marvel to see them
>sweep in lines between the stems,
>twist, arc and double back,
>colliding with companion trails.
>
>In all these endless miles of cold,
>under this unforgiving sky,
>confounding all my previous prejudice,
>a family of some tiny creatures had sported here.
>And in the centre of their circling runs
>a patch was wildly scuffed and trodden,
>as if the happy band had held a midnight dance.
>
>Or something larger had surprised them at their play.
>
>
>
>
>Mike
>
>
>
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